Phil English on wrestling | Loyola's Cathery: Sports 'saved me from being another statistic in Englewood'

December 14, 2011|Phil English | Phil English on high school wrestling

Loyola senior Santonio Cathery is proud to tell anyone who listens of his perfect attendance record in eighth grade while attending Eugene Field Elementary in Rogers Park.

Take into account that Cathery traveled two and a half hours every morning from his home at 55th and Garfield in Englewood to get to Field, and you get an idea of just how far he's come in his short life.

"I'm not as angry and full of hatred any more," Cathery said. "Now I see a big picture. I'm more dedicated, more ambitious, more hungry. Now I know I have a chance. I'm still that responsible little kid from back then. But I'm more of a man now."

It was hard not to be a bitter, angry child, especially when his father was jailed in Tulsa, Okla., and Cathery and his family moved to Chicago when he was in kindergarten. But he was motivated enough to follow his older sister, Symphony, to Field, where he met a man who changed his life.

Mike Feuer, a teacher and coach at Field who now works at another Chicago Public School, offered Cathery a simple solution to the world around him on Chicago's South Side.

"He asked me one day, 'How would you like to channel that anger and energy into a productive manner and stay out of trouble?'" the soft-spoken Cathery recalled. "So that's when I started with wrestling and football.

"To me he's just the best coach and the best person in my life so far. He kept me on track and always told me to use my athletic abilities and academics to get into schools. To not get caught up in the gang life. To be the best at everything. And don't let a day go by without working as hard as you can."

"He's a once-in-a-lifetimer," Feuer said. "I saw in him a tremendous inner discipline with a desire to win and a desire to succeed academically when others around him were not. He refused to succumb. And there are a lot of kids who are resentful of his approach. But he just wanted to succeed. There are others like him. They just need to figure out how to get out."

Feuer guided Cathery to an organization called Boys Hope Girls Hope of Illinois, which offers scholarships to academically successful youths from poverty-stricken areas. Cathery's grades were always good, and after a rigorous application process, he was accepted to Loyola. He was a safety and special teams player on the Ramblers' Class 8A state runner-up team this fall and is currently a 10-3, 160-pound wrestler.

"When we go to tournaments on weekends and have to get on the bus at six in the morning, he has to leave his home at two or four in the morning just to get there. That shows some incredible dedication," said Christopher Stephens, Cathery's wrestling coach at Loyola. "Obviously he wasn't the most disciplined person when he got here. But he has changed that and has become very responsible over the last four years."

Cathery lives in a scholarship hall in Evanston provided by the Boys Hope Girls Hope organization, and he makes weekend and holiday visits to the South Side where his mother, grandmother and four younger brothers live. He carries an 88 grade-point average on a 100-point scale and opened some eyes on the wrestling mat last summer. He took part in more than 80 matches and earned a spot on the Illinois' Junior Greco-Roman team that competed at nationals, where a loss to Oklahoma-bound Clark Glass kept him from All-America status.

He intends on making his senior year his best. Offseason workouts at Izzy Style Wrestling Club in Lombard helped him with endurance issues. Two of his three losses this season came early in the season when he was still in "football shape" and wrestling 10 pounds above his anticipated weight. One needs only to look at Tuesday night's 45-second pin victory to see that Cathery is making great strides.

Anyone familiar with his story shouldn't be surprised.

"Wrestling and football are what I like to describe as my golden ticket," Cathery said. "It saved me from being another statistic in Englewood. I could have been dead or in a gang. Before I started playing sports, I was hanging out with kids in my neighborhood who by the sixth or seventh grade were either dead or in a gang. Sports helped me keep my focus."